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June 20, 2005

So I finished The Diviners the other day. While I loved all the way to the end (and the last sentence, which literally changes the entire book that came before it), it ended up being the most political book I've ever made it through. Only you don't really notice it until the last sentence.

That being said, the structure and the writing were definitely the biggest and best parts of the book. I'm quite eager to see the "splash" it makes when it comes out in September. (Get it? Splash? Diviners?)

The book's layout, with a chapter focusing on an individual character and usually one scene or moment as the larger narrative unfolds in the background, felt a lot like what Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers is turning out to be.

I didn't realize it at first, but not only has Morrison fashioned each of the seven mini-series that make up the project into stand-alone reads, he's also made each individual issue of each mini-series a stand-alone story as well. So, when it's all done, you'll not just have nine stand along stories (each mini plus the two bookends) but rather 30 individual adventure stories. Which is pretty remarkable. It's gotten me heavily interested in looking at the series as a whole and looking at each indiviual issue of the series as a stand-alone piece.

June 06, 2005

I'm reading "The Diviners" by Rick Moody which I totally scored at the BEA this weekend, a festival I was totally basically snuck into and I can't believe my luck. The novel (apparently slated to come out even later then it's claimed September 12 release date [now I'm just gloating]) is, to my mind, out of control fantastic. Although I just read Dale Peck's legendary review of The Black Veil ("Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation") and I was all "Huh. Maybe Dale's right. Maybe I'm a sucker for patently awful fiction." After all, what Peck describes as Moody's penchant for pissing contestian beginnings could not be an apter description of the opening of this novel which I could describe quite patly (A description of the light of the sunrise starting in Los Angeles and over the course of like twenty pages that aforementioned light making its way slowly Westward across the entire planet before landing on New York City) and in a way that makes it sound completely interminous but fuck it, man, I was completely enrapt. In his review Peck also predicts that Moody's next novel would be his version of The Corrections, which is probably sort of true here, although it does not deal with a family per se but rather a loose collection of interelated charaters orbiting the entertainment industry.

I'm about halfway through the book at this point and although it hasn't really maintained the pace it opened with, as in, I could actually put it down at some points, a feat I couldn't hope to accomplish through the first few chapters, so concerned was I with the the plight of an overweight producer and her Sikh livery driver, I still find myself inhaling it with the same gusto I displayed for like The Order Of The Phoenix. It's that engaging.

So, I don't know. It's a weird thing with Peck. I was in a class of his once upon a time and I quite respect him. This was before he gained his current status as a reviewer. He has since come down quite hard on two things I quite enjoy, being Rick Moody and Six Feet Under and, now that I think about it, it's quite possible he had a hand in the way I approached my prose after Grad School, when I spent a lot of time paring down and basically doing away with the sprawling influence of not even the whole of David Foster Wallce's ouvre but simply one novel: Infinite Jest. Looking back at just this post it seems that I might have started to shed that impulse.

Which is probably for the best. The very first reaction I had to this book was "Fuck, this is the kind of book I'm dying to write." The first few chapters are completely bursting with forward momentum, there's even a bike messenger scene that's just pure propulsion. And throughout the whole thing is this overflowing of detail and, well, it's basically exactly the kind of story I'd like to be telling.

Anyway, I'll probably be finishing it in a day or so, so I'll have more to say then. I'll note, though, that I'm a complete sucker for things like the endings of Infinite Jest or Purple America or The Corrections, endings that leave a lump in my throat and I that have to read quite a few times and that I always end up talking to someone about. And these all seem to be the kinds of books that Dale Peck loathes. And I know for sure that he's thought about it much more than I have. I'm sure he's smarter than I am. I'm sure he's read more than I have. But, and maybe I'm just an ape here, I get so much personally out of these books. So who gives a fuck, right? I'm part of the problem sure, but it's not everybody's problem now is it. Maybe it is. I could go back and forth all day so it's probably better if I just go back to reading.

So, as you can see, I read every single comic I picked up this week. With no standouts (i.e. no books so anticipated that they had to be peeked at while stopped at traffic lights) I didn't have the highest hopes for the week in general. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when almost every single book was above average in quality. (Sorry Teen Titans, but you didn't manage the "above". And those What Ifs were pretty slight.) This week's superstar was undoubtedly Warren Ellis, shooting three for three on his Marvel work. Nightmare finally got interesting, Iron Man was gorgeous and highly intriguing, and UFF actually made me appreciate the work of a Kubert Brother! (I'm finding I have much less of a problem with Adam these days, as opposed to Andy.) I've said in these pages a while ago that from the start UFF is the book best suited to completely own the Manga market, and the N-Zone storyline is possibly the best example of it. Detailed spreads, kids put in harms way, it's got it all. Not to be outdone, Mark Waid does the impossible by simultaneously making me forget both my distate for Barry Kitson and any misgivings about completely eradicating decades of the only convoluted continuity I really had any interest in someday piecing together. He's made Legion into a really incredible book and seeing him jumpstart the concept has made me want to go back and read everything he's ever done. (I always find myself having a strange attraction to that post-Morrison JLA story he did with Bryan Hitch, for one.) The Walking Dead was also another highlight. Everything else was damned good.

You might also notice a few new additions to my little Criterion family. More importantly, though, take note that I actually watched one of the ones I already had (this one in particular, actually, I must have had for over two years and still had not watched.) Yes, as I'm doing with books, I'm going to curtail my fresh purchases of Criterions until I finish watching the ones I already own. A startling turn of events for our hero to be sure. Samurai I: Musashi Miayamoto turned out to be the perfect place to start. (Although after I finish the trilogy I might, unbelievably counterproductively, start over with Grand Illusion just to see it shine on the WSHDTV. Or maybe I'll just come back to it when I get to the end.) On the surface, it doesn't look to be the most appealing entry in the CC. Toshiro Mifune as a Samurai? Upgrade. No Kurosawa? Downgrade. But, surprise, the movie was actually quite gripping once you get into it. It's about an actual legendary Samurai (Miyamoto, of Square's Brave Fencer Musashi fame) and the time in his life he spent being betrayed at almost every turn. The shit this guy goes through is ruthless. He comes home after his side loses a great battle and his childhood friend bails on him to hook up with a freaky mom and her 16 year old daughter, only to find that it's been taken over and everyone wants him dead. He seeks solace with a local priest who wastes no time in hanging him from a tree and leaving him there for several days. There's more ignominy in there, but I'm loathe to ruin the surprise. The photography; full color, 1.33:1; is also a standout. I remember thinking the transfer was pretty ass when I watched some of the film on my old TV, but somehow it looks significantly better on my heroic WSHDTV. There are some spots where the film itself rocks some fading colors, but for the most part, it looks pretty fantastic. (And this was most of the reason why I was tempted to start over and watch everything in the Collection again from #1 on.)

Speaking of transfers, something's rotten in the state of San Diego. I was lucky enough to get my paws on all three Anchorman related discs (the film, Wake-Up, and the Best Buy Exclusive) and before I get started on how awesome they are, I have to say the Anchorman transfer sucks complete and total ass. Samurai looked significantly better than this film. None of this, however, actually stopped any of the film from being incredibly hilarious. And this is without even getting into how awesome pretty much every moment of deleted and/or outtaked (outtaken?) material is. The commentary is also fantastic, featuring both Lou Rawls and a long conversation about Adam McKay's upcoming projects, including Brek, an animated comedy about a fairy-tale cyclops. Wake-Up, unsurprisingly, is a pretty thrown together movie, but it finally brings the lunchroom scene ("What do you mean one of those?") to the light of day and introduces us all to the incredible wonders of the Ron-Driving-While-Looking-At-Veronica-The-Entire-Time Scene.

I think that's all I've got for you this week. The Almodovar was fantastic (especially seeing Talk To Her again. When the dancers come out waltzing at the end? Unbelievable. And The-Guy-Playing-Marco? Also unbelievable). As far as Fargo and Angel go, man, my TV rules.

December 25, 2004

So I just started reading The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby and even though I buy The Believer every month and see the column the book is based on when I flip through the latest issue before burying it under a pile of comics and/or clothes, having them all in one clump (and actually reading them) has naturally inspired me to do something similar in this space. Long time readers will no doubt remember similar attempts to focus this blog into something more than it really is, but I think it really could work this time. After all, everything in this blog that's not directly related to production of my comic could be framed as something I bought and my reaction to it. My only regret is that I didn't start this a few weeks earlier, when I was reading Lemony Snicket's The Grim Grotto and Import Tuner magazine.

(I don't know how far back this goes, but hopefully future installments will be a bit less unweildy. These were the things that popped into my head.)

One of things I'm enjoying most about TPS is the paper trail Hornby follows in cataloguing the things he reads. It was the thing I was most looking forward to here. For example, you can see that I bought Kingdom Hearts but played KH: Chain Of Memories, FF X-2, and Chrono Cross. What happened was this. Some of you might remember my recent attempts at improving my video game driving acumen. This was continuing on apace until, for some reason still a bit mysterious to me, I recaught my always-at-least-dormant zeal for Square RPGs. I started back in on FF X-2 at first and returned immediately to getting into random battles and increasing my AP levels in order to learn new abilities. I will freely admit that this is the main reason I play RPGs and probably why I stick to Square. I honestly have no idea how most other RPGs are set up in terms of levelling (the only non-Square RPG I can think of that I've played was Knights Of The Old Republic and I didn't really enjoy it), but Square is set up, as far as my inclinations go, perfectly. Every one of their games that I've actually finished, I've finished resoundingly, trouncing the final boss, because I've spent upwards of twenty hours in one dungeon picking fights and getting new Spheres/Materia/Jobs. Most of the time I don't even use the stuff I've unlocked. I'm just as bad a collector in the virtual one as I am in the physical. Anyway, this led to me to a brief fling with Chrono Cross, a massive trade in of old and unused GBA games to fund the purchase of Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories and after getting halway through that, a necessary purchase of its progenitor, because there was shit going on that I just knew I was missing. You can expect at least one Disney DVD purchase in the next installment of this "column" because Kingdom Hearts is great at both reminding you of what's so appealing about DIsney Animated Films and completely erasing any memory of their more annoying charateristics. (How could I have any desire to buy Aladdin, when "Whole New World" is in the film?)

Speaking of collecting, there were some great fucking books out this week. It might be fun in this and future installments to compare the list of comics I bought with the list of comics I read. (For those unwilling/able, I bought but didn't read Goon and Following Cerebus this week.) FC isn't really a comic, it's a magazine about Cerebus, but that's hardly an excuse. The Goon is probably the best book I'm buying but slow to read. Maybe it's because I have an inherent wariness to read a book about a weird city with stories that bend genre conventions. For some strange reason. Astonishing was the book I read while walking from the store back to work. I was just dying to read it. And it was out of control great. There was a sense that, at a few more crowded moments over the past couple of issues, Cassaday wasn't really doing his best work. A few scenes, like that bunch of people crashing through that wall last issue, seemed sketchier than usual. There are no such moments in the latest issue. Tight as a drum and thank God, because this is Joss' best written issue so far. Sure that S.W.O.R.D. exposition scene doesn't feel at all relevent (yet) but everything else was goddamned fabulous. And that page with Wolverine (you know the one I mean) was his funniest moment since What Th--?!? #2 brought us "Grepppps!" On the other hand, X-Men was just embarassing. The kind of book that, even though only you are reading it and thus only you can see how cheesy and cloying it is, you are embarassed to be seen with in public. Authority was a fine read, but its the kind of book I probably won't have much to say about it until it's finished (same goes for Sleeper). Wolverine is a book I'm pretty wild about these days. The art is fantastic and Millar is successfully recreating the stories behind every doodle I ever drew in High School. ("In this one, Daredevil is fighting Wolverine!") The Green Lantern book is only the latest Geoff Johns jernt I've picked up. I've become quite enamored with with the way he writes superhero stories. Don't ask me how or why. Superhero books have always been one of my more unexplainable pleasures. When they work for me, they work for me. There was a scary moment while reading Shaolin where I thought I might have outgrown my affinity for Geoff Darrow's work. Does this mean that my internal battle over whether or not to plunk down fifty bucks for the Matrix Boxset might be over? (Pros: Conceptual Artwork by Darrow/Skroce, West Commentary, new Matrix transfer. Cons: Nearly every second of Matrix Revolutions) I don't know for sure that I'm all the way over him. There were just a few moments in the book where it seemed he wasn't really working for me anymore. We'll have to see how this ends up after a few more issues. Morrison back on JLA was just incredibly fun to read, offering very little to discuss.

I'm kind of miffed that the people I know who I know have seen Shaun Of The Dead did not immediately ensure that I saw it immediately. I can see why they didn't, though. I hate, hate, hate scary movies. This is because, when it comes to movies, I am a complete and total pussy. I clench up in my seat, I cover my eyes and ears. I am liquid. So even I myself was pretty loathe to see this movie. Wrong move. It was so fantastic, so smartly clever (you know, clever but in a subtle way that doesn't annoy you), so perfectly attuned to my sensibilities that it went from unseen to instant personal classic in (according to the box) One Hour, 40 min. There was only one big jump (shower scene) and I even got a little thrill out of it (this often happens with good scary movies like Alien and never happens with shitty scary movies like Aliens). More importantly, though, it was just shit in my pants hilarious. I won't waste time recounting line after line of comedy (I'll save that for when Anchorman/Wake Up Ron Burgundy comes out next week), but the record bit was a particular standout.

That's it for this installment. If it's in the second list and I haven't talked about it, it was simply really excellent and I expected it to be really excellent so, really, what is there to talk about.

September 23, 2004

So, I've had a full day to mull it over, digest what I've read, and my original sentiment toward's Stephen King's latest (final?) novel The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower still stands.

BEST NOVEL EVAR.

No, seriously. It's fan-fucking-tastic, a luminous beacon of badassery, deeming my temporarily halted quest to read all of his books as completely and utterly righteous. I wouldn't dare spoil a thing, not on your life. You'll have to make it to your own state of blubbering exhaustion in turn.

But it is worth the ever-lovin' journey. Is it ever.

Each of the five parts of the book contain a novel's worth of event, of action, of character; it is truly the Jetson's Dinner Capsule of Popular Novels. Any significant plot thread introduced in the previous 6 books is dealt with, not to mention a few lovely new ones. My personal favorite things in the novel, without spoilers?

Well, never is the resonance of this cycle of books more apparent than when he deals with the regular joes and janes whose lives are briefly touched by the action and actions of our Ka-Tet. In this final volume, the tiny lives of John Cullum and Irene Tassenbaum are briefly illuminated by Roland's quest, and they make up some of the most resonant moments in the book. You'll read it. You'll know what I mean.

Also? The whole fucking thing. Every page.

And no matter what you've heard about the ending, you haven't. Trust me. If you don't like it, honestly, you haven't been paying attention.

And that's all I'm going to say this week. I'll give you all a chance to finish up. But come next week, all bets are off.

August 05, 2004

As you can see by the gap between this T.C.R.M.R.A.T. post and the last T.C.R.M.R.A.T. post, it's been a long friggin' time. Thus I've scrapped the idea of keeping track of the days since I started and the days until The Dark Tower VII. In fact, I'm so laughably behind that I briefly toyed with the idea of just going straight to the "Dark Tower Related" booklist and just reading all those (and the DT books themselves) in time for September 20 (yes, you read that right. I'm getting it a day early at A STEPHEN KING SIGNING IN CT, DOGG!!). But that would totally derail the entire project. Would I read those books again when I got up to them chronologically? Hell freakin' no! I got other books to read, son! Naturally I will be completely inhaling DT7 the very moment it is handed to me, obviously jumping the track of this project temporarily. Then I will go back to wherever it is that I was and DT7 will be the perfect capper to this project, whenever it is that I god damned finish the thing.

Oh! Right! The Dead Zone!

I never saw the movie version of this one so, it's all completely fresh. Well sort of, which brings me to one of the many points I was hoping to cover during the course of this madcap journey. Everyone (everyone) has at one point or another seen some kind of riff on the fundamental concept behind The Dead Zone. Guy shakes hands with someone and gets a sudden telepathic flash about them and/or their future. I doubt that King was the first guy to ever come up with an idea like this, but it is his particular strain of it that has dominated the cultural landscape. It seems to me that throughout his canon, he has so many "definitive" takes on things like this. "Cujo," "Christine," "Shawshank," "Firestarter," "The Shining"; these have all become shorthand in our culture. Sure a lot of it has to do with the popular movies that the novels spawned, but fundamentally there was something about the story itself that stuck itself to the way people think.

The reason why is anybody's guess, really, but I think this property of his stories is what makes something like The Dark Tower so exciting and interesting. Not only is it a fantastic yarn on its own, as the saga goes on (and hurtles toward its so close yet so fucking far away conclusion), it's becoming increasingly clear that King's canon, and the culture itself that it has affected so deeply, is all interwined with Roland's quest to save reality.

I've gotten into many discussions about comics and why some are popular and some are not, and I tend to always bring up the basic reasons why someone like Peter Parker is so popular. It's because he is so close to all of our experience. As much as Jack Ryan or James Bond are (presumably) exciting protagonists, there is no one "Hero" to follow around in King's work. Rather, it is the average Joe or Jane, in so many permutations throughout his career it borders on nigh-infinite, that we follow, and that draws us so close to the story. That's always been King's greatest gift, painting the ordinary in such rich and detailed strokes that when it all spins out of control, when reality shifts beyond repair, the effect on the reader is incalculable.

Speaking of those rich and detailed strokes, this is the first novel he'd written since The Stand, and it's nice to settle down on just a handful of characters after the previous cast of billions. There's plenty of great stuff in here, particularly the way King handles John's mother, painting her as a religious hysteric, but steering clear of grotesque caricature.

I'm sort of worn out after all that general pontificating, so I can't think of much else to talk about as far as "The Zone" goes. More later?

It's weird, but even though The Long Walk is probably the Stephen King work least likely to ever ever be made into a film (well, maybe Rage is a longer shot), the idea of such a film keeps squirming into my head. Chad Michael Murray is Ray Garraty, Topher Grace is McVries. Can't you see it? Man, though, all that shooting would just make it nigh-unwatchable for my delicately wussy ears.

One thing, though, if you had been walking, say, all day, non-stop, and you somehow managed to blow a load in your pants (without even, aparrently, any manual help from either hand), how could you possibly be able to keep walking at a steady pace? Not even a warning? The only thing he's worried about is a noticable stain? And that's the last time it's mentioned? Oooooookay, Steve.

Other than that bizarre turn of ejaculatory events, this book is exhausting, as it should be. No breaks, no breathers, just non-stop prose exertion.

(That's the corresponding page in the paperback edition of The Bachman Books [BB, dur] in parentheses in case you're curious)

Plenty of shame in this game, but I'll freely admit, I was pretty much in full on tears through the last 40 of The Stand. Watching Tom Cullen's slow burn realization that Nick was dead over the last two hundo was bad enough but when he drops that bombshell on Stu about Heaven, "Nick can talk, and I'll be able to think," well, that was it for this young lad.

It's pretty remarkable the way sums up everything in those last few scenes, talking about the Free Zone disbanding, about wanderlust and social grouping, about how a sherriff can become a Minister Of Defense with very little elbow grease, about A Season Of Rest. It's a remarkably satisfying ending, and a whole hell of a lot different than the endings of the novels above it on the list, which mainly resolved the plot, gave everyone a nice coda, and that was that. Not that I'm complaining about those books, either. But The Stand is, obviously, a completely different animal, and if he had just resolved everything plot-wise and left it at that, well, cue disappointment. But he totally, non-preachingly, sells the whole damn book in the closing pages.

I can only imagine how astonishing the end of The Dark Tower is going to be.

Also, I'm eager to see how the really well-constructed rhythm and pacing of the book stands up in the Cajun Style version.

The Long Walk, now, after all the sumptuous prosody of the book I just finished, was like a brick to the face. Total no-bullshit sentences flying out at you like huge splinters from a tree getting chopped down. You just have to move out of the way as he hacks through this story. It was pretty obviously written way before The Stand, but the story is an unquestionably good one. One thing you really get a sense of is the scenery around this one road and the consequences of their change. Like when the sun sets on the first day of the walk, it dawns on you how long, already, these kids have been walking. And he very effectively has them talk about both distances to towns further down the road, and records that have been set for all 100 Walkers to make a certain distance without a ticket getting punched, so that after they impressively break an 8 mile record, you're suitably impressed. Until Garraty tells everyone the next town is almost TWENTY MILES away. That's when you start unconsciously stretching out your own legs as you're reading this book. The characters aren't as well developed (against The Stand, though, which books' are?), but the physical sensation of the book is hugely impressive.

My favorite description so far is when the Walkers make their way into a small town at night and there's a bunch of newscasters waiting for them, huge halogens set up to light the footage. The way the approach is described is so effing vivid.

I'm a bit concerned that there's only a little more than a hundo pages left and it's just now getting to the hot beef injection of conflict. I can't complain very loudly, though, since every god damned character is so incredibly illuminated by this story. Even the one-offs that Lloyd Henried talks to over the phone feel fleshed out. I'm really just blown away by the level of detail, both character-based and situational, in this book. I know I keep saying that but I really don't know what else to say. There aren't any missteps to complain about, it's hard to pick out a particular scene or character, since they all seem equally well-drawn and appropriate. That's what keeps me reading, the level of quality, even more so than the plot (although since I did rememeber the bomb from the first reading, once I got to the scene where Harold is building it I absolutely could not stop reading until it had gone off). I want to see if the next scene will be as good as the last, if the next little sliver of characterization is as deeply felt as the last one. I honestly can't see myself being disappointed in any of the rest of the books I'll be reading by him, simply because The Stand tells you exactly what to look for in the quality of his writing.

Side Note: I watched about 20 minutes of Kingdom Hospital last night and I realized why it wasn't gelling with me. If I closed my eyes, I could see that it was well constructed and well written, that if it was a novel, I would definitely be enjoying it, but the execution, sadly, leaves a whole lot to be desired. I think that, for the most part, that's why a lot of his film projects never connect with me, especially the ones on TV. They just don't deliver what he can.

I'll be finishing this book, without a doubt, this weekend. I will miss it terribly, and look forward to reading it again, Cajun Style, further on down the path of the beam.

Okay, at this point I'm going to come right out and say that there is no possible way someone can write a novel like this so early in one's career. The leap in quality from The Shining to this book is just mind-boggling.

That's all I've got to say about this book so far, as I'd much rather just be reading it.

January 2008

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